Ever heard of Skin-On? Probably not, but that’s why we’re here to tell you all about it. You can surely assume it has something to do with skin, but there’s no way in the world you would ever think up such a thing.

So what is it exactly?

It’s actually a phone case that not only looks and feels like real human skin, but it also enables interaction through human gestures such as tickling and pinching, just like real skin.

The Skin-On phone case has recently been presented as a prototype by a team of English and French researchers at the University of Bristol, together with Sorbonne University and Telecomm ParisTech. 

The unique and somewhat creepy phone case has a layer of stretchable copper wire, placed between two silicon layers, and is set to be for sale for approximately $6.5. Not too bad for such an innovative product, and that’s because the materials are mass-produced. 

Why have such a strange thing though? Well, according to researchers, since skin is something we are so familiar with already, why not use it for our daily devices? And although it already detects many human gestures, they are working on taking things even further, such as giving it hair and adding a temperature feature.